


Could you put a name to someone else's sigh

by becka



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Dreams, Dreams vs. Reality, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-30
Updated: 2015-06-30
Packaged: 2018-04-07 02:16:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4245693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/becka/pseuds/becka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes Ronan dreams about sex. Sometimes he dreams about Adam. And sometimes he's worried that those dreams won't stay safely in his head.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Could you put a name to someone else's sigh

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to River for cheerleading my first fic in this fandom. <3
> 
> Title from Belle and Sebastian, "Dirty Dream Number Two".

Sometimes Ronan’s dreams are just like everyone else’s. Sometimes his dreams start and end in the sea of sleep, surfacing and sliding back under without so much as a ripple in the real world. He doesn’t allow for much speculation about the inside of his head, figures everyone’s seen his nightmares and they won’t want to ask for more, but that doesn’t mean all his dreams are bad. Sometimes he dreams about running through the fields back home, the smell of sunshine on grass, Matthew laughing behind him. Sometimes he dreams about flying beside Chainsaw, swooping over Henrietta on fantastic wings. And sometimes he dreams about sex.

It’s normal, maybe the most normal thing about him, and he tells himself that as he shakes free of the dregs of an anonymous embrace, swimming up to consciousness and palming at his dick in his boxers. He touches himself quietly in case Gansey’s awake in the next room, gets off imagining another hand or a mouth on him, genderless, nearly disembodied. It’s enough, usually. It’s enough until he starts dreaming of Adam.

The better he gets at taking things from his dreams, the harder it is not to do it, not to pocket a souvenir as he wakes, something small and mundane, especially if it’s a nice dream, the kind that doesn’t want to kill him. He comes back with a cricket cupped in his palm after one of the summer-day dreams where he’s a kid again, and he watches it hop along the length of his bed until Chainsaw flaps up and swallows it whole. Ronan feels a pang of regret and wonders if it’s technically cannibalism, one dream thing eating another. He tries not to bring back anything living after that, regardless.

The dreams about Adam always start out innocently, in Monmouth or in Adam’s tiny apartment, and they always start with proximity. All Ronan wants most days is to be close enough to touch him, to feel the solid reality of Adam’s body, to lean into him and smell his sweat and his cheap shampoo. And that’s easy in the dreams, not something he needs an excuse for. He can hold Adam’s healing hands and brush his lips along the base of Adam’s neck and know that he’ll be welcome. When Adam kisses him though, it’s a surprise every time, every way he dreams it, frantic and hot or gentle and hesitating. Those are the constants in the dreams, but they go a lot farther than that some nights, Ronan’s subconscious spilling out fantasies of Adam naked under him, on top of him, around him, inside him. The possibilities are endless, details helpfully culled from the internet.

Sometimes he wakes up already on the verge of orgasm, and sometimes it never reaches that point. Sometimes he startles out of a kiss to find Chainsaw destroying something under his bed, scraping noisily at a soda can or pecking at the eyelets of his boots. Ronan feels cheated on those nights, but he recognizes he’s being saved from himself as well. When he wakes up with a strand of dusty hair wrapped around his finger, he knows he’s going too far. But he can’t make himself stop.

One night he dreams of holding Adam in his bed, spooning around him and finding the way their limbs interlock just right. He rests a hand against Adam’s bare belly, fingers splayed to feel the rhythm of his breath, and the things he doesn’t know about Adam’s body are filled in by desire. He ruts against the gentle swell of Adam’s ass, his dick rubbing wetly in his boxers, and it’s the desperate hitch of his own breath that wakes him this time.

For a disorienting moment, Ronan has to struggle back towards reality, remember that Adam is safely in his own apartment, that none of the dream is real. It’s another moment before he realizes there’s something in his hand, clutched rigidly over his dick, something he didn’t intend to bring back. Slowly he unfolds his fingers, although his dick is still throbbing, ready to come. In his hand is a pair of boxers, crumpled and sweaty now, and absolutely not his own. It’s dark, so he can’t see if they’re patterned or plain, but he can feel the worn weave of the thin, cheap cotton, and he knows his brain has concocted Adam’s underwear, and the ley line has put it into his hand. With nothing left to lose, he gets a good grip on his dick and finishes jerking off into the crumpled mess of counterfeit boxers.

It’s not until the next day that Ronan really worries about the other possible consequences of sinking into those kinds of dreams. He’s brought living things back before, Chainsaw and the cricket and all his nightmares, even the gruesome specter of his own dying body, but it’s never occurred to him that he might grab so tightly onto another person that they follow him out of a dream. It’s worse than the night horrors, imagining a dream version of Adam, built from nothing but Ronan’s perverse fantasies—and maybe the not-so-perverse ones too—pulled into his bed for real. There’s no imitation that could give him the gnarled depths of Adam’s brain, the parts of Adam Ronan can’t and couldn’t know.

It’s no fun after that. He makes an effort to push Adam away, even in his dreams, prim and untouchable and absolutely aching with want. He finds himself staring at Adam during the day as well, and he sees Adam noticing, but he can’t help it. The sexual fantasies he does allow himself become faceless and blurry again, nothing he could grab onto tightly enough to be dangerous.

Sleep comes hard and suddenly on Ronan sometimes, especially when he’s tried to outrun it for a while, and there’s one afternoon when he closes his eyes while he’s waiting for Adam to get home from the garage and drops suddenly into the kind of dream he’s been carefully avoiding. It’s hot at the top of the steep church stairs, but the bead of sweat rolling down the back of his neck becomes a stroking fingertip, and Adam is coaxing him into a kiss, opening Ronan’s mouth with his tongue. Ronan can’t resist. He grabs for Adam’s waist, fingers bunching Adam’s thin t-shirt, digging underneath to get at his skin.

Adam says his name on a soft breath, and Ronan bites at his lip. He’s holding too tight, giving in too much to the pull of the dream, but he can’t help chasing the moment a little farther.

“Ronan,” Adam says again, and Ronan’s eyes slam open. He’s gripping a handful of Adam’s shirt, breathing hard in the airless stairwell, and Adam is watching him at close range, sitting beside him on the top step. Ronan blinks hard, stares into his face, horrified, wondering if he can bear to throw a dream version of Adam down the stairs, if he can bear to kill this thing he’s made. But then Adam says, “Hey, chill out, it’s just me.” And it is. It’s just Adam, real, inscrutable Adam with his dirty t-shirt and scrubbed-clean hands and whole worlds swirling behind his eyes.

“I was asleep,” says Ronan, but he couldn’t explain more, even if he wanted.

Adam’s expression gentles. “You were dreaming.”

“That’s what I do,” says Ronan.

Adam watches him for a moment longer, inscrutable, and then his mouth softens. He leans forward and they’re kissing, awake and real and so light Ronan can’t quite believe it. “It’s okay,” says Adam, the words puffed out against his lips, Adam’s nose nearly touching his cheek.

Ronan wants to question it, but he doesn’t know where to start, so he lets this one thing be simple, smoothing a hand through Adam’s hair and kissing him again, learning the shape of Adam’s mouth with his own. The tip of Adam’s tongue brushes his lower lip and Ronan kisses him more deeply, want beginning to pulse in his belly. But he doesn’t have to pull himself away now. Adam will tell him where to stop like his dreams never can.

They kiss until they’re breathless and pouring sweat, Adam’s cheeks gone pink and his pale eyelashes fluttering. “We should go in,” he says. “Before the nuns see.”

“Before the nuns see what exactly?”

Adam’s flush deepens. “Anything that might be visible.”

Ronan will ask him “why” later, but for now it’s enough to fold his hand around Adam’s and follow him through the door.


End file.
